A second man looked around the corner, his eyes going wide as he looked straight into Lyons's face.

Grabbing the guy by the hair, Lyons jerked the sentry's face into the muzzle of the silent Colt, and pulled the trigger twice.

He tried to shove the dead man away, but stumbled over the corpse. Still he aimed one-handed at the other sentry, and fired.

The slug clanged off the Galil's barrel and tore through the man's right bicep. The guy sucked down a breath as the pain came, but the scream never left his throat, a second .45-caliber hollowpoint punching into his chest. The third went high, tearing away the top of his head.

Lyons changed magazines. On one knee he listened for an alarm. The roof door swung back and forth on its hinges, and voices came from below; a worker used a power drill. But he heard no shouting, no rush of feet on the stairs.

He looked over to Blancanales. His partner gave him a thumbs-up, then he and Luis crept across to join Lyons. They stripped the Galils from the dead men. They found 9mm automatics in shoulder holsters. Lyons nudged Luis.

"Put on that one's coat, and sling the rifle over your shoulder. Pol, you make like the other man. Down the stairs, left into the office. I want that phony colonel alive."

Descending the stairs, Luis and Blancanales screened Lyons with their bodies. They watched the floor of the warehouse. The workers continued in their preparation for the death and dismemberment of thousands of innocent people. Colonel Morales helped a worker press a sheet of C-4 into a wide flat box. Then another worker poured thousands of steel nuts and bolts over the plastic explosive to fill the box. They closed the box, and taped it tight to create a one-foot-by-two-foot Claymore mine.

The three invaders cut from the stairs to the door of the windowless office. Blancanales watched a worker pasting newspaper over the improvised Claymore. The bomb would be placed at a newsstand, to spray an intersection or an entire city block with crude but deadly shrapnel. Lyons, now in front of the "sentries," pushed open the door. He saw a young man leaning over a map of Guatemala City. The man spoke without looking up.